The Cellar - Dark Publications

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Similar Items:

•	The Beast House
•	The Midnight Tour (Beast House Series)
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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Visitors flock to see the Beast House with its blood-soaked corridors and creaky doors. Armed with video camcorders, these poor sould enter the forbidden house, never to return. The deeper they go into the house, the darker their nightmares become. Don't even think about going into the cellar.

Customer Reviews: Read 50 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

your left in shock and horror April 26, 2001
10 out of 11 found this review helpful

This was my first Ricard Laymon book. After hearing of the plot from a friend I immediately rushed out a bought a copy of this horrorific book. A recommendation, if you get attached to characters easily and CAN'T STAND to see them hurt...dont read this. One of Richard Laymon's (RIP) great strengths is his ability to create great characters and make you pull for them. This is a fast paced read, with a story centering around the Beast House and its past infamy. Murders, rapes, gores and horrors are the norm at this house, all handed out by the 'beast'. The characters all come into place very nicely with some gruesome sub-plots to boot. With every uncovered truth we the reader are horrified at what is happening, but are left not wanting to put the book down because you dont want to leave the character in such an evil situation. The ending in this book has to be the most gruesome, gory and uh,...most DISTURBING piece of literature I've ever read (and Ive read some crazy stuff). I was left thinking, this can be over! I was outraged. Then, when i found that this was only the first book in the series i raced out and bought the rest. Richard Laymon will be missed, he is the greatest and most under appreciated horror writer of our time. Give this book a chance, its a short read and worth the nightmares

4 out of 5 stars

Hardboiled Horror April 15, 2003
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

Laymon's work is so terse and hard-hitting that it's almost impossible to read it slowly. His prose style owes more to the 'hard-boiled' school of crime and mystery authors than to any traditional horror writers. This gives his best books more brute power than even hardened horror readers might expect. Sentences of sharp, brutal impact can leap off the page and strike the reader like open-handed slaps.
'The Cellar' is one of his best in that it couples this stripped-down readability with an absolutely merciless plot. At his peak, you can never tell how Laymon will end his tales, who will die, who will live and what will be left of them. The conclusion of 'The Cellar' is legendary and it thoroughly deserves this status.
If you like horror fiction, be it Poe or Barker or Blackwood or Hutson, give this book a try. Nobody ever wrote quite like this before.

5 out of 5 stars

Gory, sexual and gruesome, what did you expect? September 19, 2005
9 out of 15 found this review helpful

This a raw one from Laymon, master of great juicy stories.

This simply is one of those delicious books, that you start reading, you gasp and ger upset at the bad guy, you want to cover your eyes when the characters you grow to like, go into places they shouldn't and you know you cant put this down untill you read the end, just know that this is the first intallment of a trilogy.

The trilogy is composed of The Cellar, The Beast House and the Midnight tour. Make sure you read it in the right order because it builds the layers of this creepy and totall grear book.

Yes theres death, blood, gore, explicit sex scenes (other than the disturbing child molestation, probably necessaru to ultimately despise and wish death to the villan) and other stuff but thats the kind of book this is, and if it turns you on in any remote way give it a try.

4 out of 5 stars

Early Laymon, extra grim February 25, 2007
8 out of 9 found this review helpful

For around two decades, from the early 1980s to his death in the early 21st Century, Richard Laymon produced his own brand of horror. Among his thirty-or-so novels, I have now read five: Resurrection Dreams, After Midnight, Into the Fire, Blood Games and now, The Cellar. This last book may very well be his first novel (based on the copyrights), but it is clearly a product of Laymon's imagination. And, generally speaking, that is a good thing.

The Cellar opens up (after a brief prologue) with Donna Hayes finding out that her ex-husband Roy has just been released from prison. Roy is a true villain with no redeeming value to speak of, and he is out for revenge against his former spouse. He also intends to take up again his "romance" with their pre-teen daughter, Sandy. With a few hours head start, Donna and Sandy flee to Northern California, where after a car accident, they find themselves stuck in the small town of Malcasa Point.

This town has one tourist feature, the Beast House, where some disturbing killings have taken place over the years. Fortunately, the creature that supposedly lurks within only goes come out at night and never leaves the house. Hence, during the day, it has tours. Larry Usher, one of the rare survivors of a Beast attack when he was a kid, finds he is still haunted by the creature; he recruits Jud, a mysterious mercenary, to take out the creature.

Eventually, the paths of all these characters will cross. It's obvious that Donna will eventually be trapped between Roy and the Beast and that romance will bloom between her and Jud, one of those virtuous assassins that seem to only exist in fiction. It is to Laymon's credit, however, that he does not always go in obvious directions, and there are twists that lead to a logical if unexpected conclusion.

This is not a perfect book. Laymon's efforts to make Roy repulsive are effective yet sometimes overly gratuitous. Also, although this would actually be the first time he used this theme, he tends to produce more woman-in-jeopardy stories than the Lifetime Channel movie division. All the novels I've read of his follow this idea, albeit in different fashions. Even with his flaws, however, Laymon writes well enough and The Cellar is a quick, suspenseful read.

5 out of 5 stars

Laymon's first is one of his best July 10, 2006
7 out of 9 found this review helpful

Author Richard Laymon is best known for his doorstop-sized horror tomes. But in 1980, when his debut novel first appeared, he was not known for anything. This probably explains its trim physique. At just around 250 pages, The Cellar is likely the shortest thing Laymon has written outside of novel length. But there's just as much going on in its pages as in any of his heftier books.

Donna Hayes and her young daughter Sandy are on the run from Sandy's pedophile father, Roy, who is in pursuit. They arrive at Malcasa Point, the hometown of the Beast House, a local tourist attraction and the site of nearly a dozen murder over the last century. A mythical beast is rumored to be the cause of the deaths, and a mercenary named Jud (short for "Judgment") Rucker has been hired by the only known survivor to dispatch the creature. Jud and Donna combine their efforts against their respective enemies while Roy takes other victims to fill the time until he can get back to his favorite.

The Cellar is a lean, mean frightening machine -- David Garnett recommends it highly in his essay from Horror: 100 Best Books. Every word counts in this slim novel, and Laymon's skill at narrative is shown here already in full swing (as is his penchant for gruesome violence and deviant sexuality). He may have written better books or scarier ones, but he never wrote one that reads as quickly. Also, the surprise conclusion will likely shock even the most jaded horror readers (who usually expect a different kind of ending). For readers who enjoy their first foray into the Beast House, three sequels await: The Beast House, The Midnight Tour, and Friday Night in Beast House.

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